#and this has caused snowball effects of bad assumptions and misunderstandings of how the characters work

[paragonrobits]

Rebecca Sugar was reportedly surprised that the fandom never worked out that the Gems are actually solar-powered robots (though a form very different from what we would recognize as robots), but honestly, it fits the pattern of a lot of a fandom bending over backwards to pretend Gems are more human-like than they really are.

i’ve been in this fandom since the big complain button was the pilot designs and everyone wanting the show to look like that, and from the beginning, you had people assuming Gems were actually humans or were transformed from humans, and it went on from there.

you had people who insisted that all ‘good fusions’ were the ones that most resembled humans. that had to have as few eyes as possible, or as few limbs, and be close to human size. fortunately, the existence of fusions like Steg (multiple limbs, giant) and Obsidian (so monstrous they cannot even speak normally and the biggest fusion in-series) disproved this, being both very inhuman and also forged from the strongest relationships in the show.

And it goes on; the fandom has a bad habit of assuming the Gems are more like humans, or are just humans with magical powers and Gem cores, and this caused major problems. it’s only become more widespread recently that Gems blatantly differ from humans psychologically, socially, and on the level of basic needs on so many levels that they only really make sense when you view them not as magical girl-type species, but as... well, robots made of light with a consciousness housed in a mineral deposit.

I mean, i remember when everyone wanted gemlings to be a thing? “How else could Gems reproduce?” people insisted, even though the show subtextually implied that if they COULD reproduce physically, they woudn’t be making Kindergartens. The idea that they were artificially made, with no other means, never occurred to people, as far as I could glean from fandom drama. They COULDN’T reproduce.

I feel a lot of this is because they have human-like designs; sure, this makes them relatable, but it also makes viewers make the dangerous assumptions that Gems are more like humans than they really are, and they’re honestly very alien; physically, mentally, and especially socially.

When you think of them not as colorful humans, but as robots made of hard light, with the mental differences you would expect of artificial beings built for specific purposes and group-think that are learning to deviate from those patterns, everything about them makes a LOT more sense.